Monday, November 10, 2014

The DNA evidence has been around for some years now, but it's still fresh for a layman like me. Global. People everywhere, though not all people, are interested in these details, of the proof about their origins. If I had Polynesian blood and science told me my ancestors were from Taiwan, I'd be tripping out.

But Taiwan back then and Taiwan today are two different worlds and cultures. Two different gene pools. These guys, Oscar Kightley and Nathan Rarere go on a special voyage.

I'm getting old. I know this because when I think of any five or 10 people from history I'd like to talk with — to interview — Captain Cook would be on that list. Definitely. He saw things nobody in the West had seen. His perspective on different islands and continents would've been fascinating to see and hear. Imagine what he'd think of our world today.

First question: "Captain, is there anything you would've done differently?"

Friday, October 17, 2014

I wondered the other day about a place like Sakhalin, where Siberians/Russians and Japanese/East Asians have a shared history. Not necessarily a harmonious history, but I know so little of it. Maybe some long-time generational fisherman families from Hokkaido consider Sakhalin their adopted home.

But what I found in this piece by Mariya Sevela was intriguing, informative and stirred up my imagination.

At the time of the Soviet ‘liberation’ of South Sakhalin, it was inhabited by nearly half a million people: Japanese, Koreans (mostly forced labourers), White Russians, Poles and the island’s indigenous peoples – Ainu, Nivkhi and Ul’ta. From 1942, Karafuto had been incorporated into the Japanese home islands (naichi) and was no longer the responsibility of the Ministry of Colonisation (takumushô). It thus gradually became more and more an integral part of Japan itself.

A portion of the population, mainly women, children and the elderly, managed to get off the island during August. For some of them, however, the passage across the Soya Strait was a grim one; three refugee ships were torpedoed by a Soviet submarine near Hokkaido with heavy loss of life. Nevertheless, more than 100,000 did escape, reducing Karafuto’s Japanese population to some 300,000 by the time the war was over, though figures vary according to the source.

There were 300,000 Japanese on that island?? Ainu, I can see. But who are the Nivkhi and Ul'ta?

Wednesday, February 12, 2014

Jared Diamond calls them Austronesians. Previous generations called them Malays. Whatever they were called, they sure got around and around.

Photo: Alizul.blogspot.com

Most native Madagascar people today, called Malagasy, can trace their ancestry back to the founding 30 mothers, according to an extensive new DNA study published in the latest Proceedings of the Royal Society B,. Researchers focused on mitochondrial DNA, passed down from mothers to their offspring. Scientists assume some men were with the women.

"I'm afraid this wasn't a settlement by Amazon seafarers!" lead author Murray Cox told Discovery News. "We propose settlement by a very small group of Indonesian women, around 30, but we also presume from the genetics that there were at least some Indonesian men with them. At this stage, we don't know how many."

Many Malagasy carry a gene tied to Indonesia. The DNA detective work indicates just 30 Indonesian women founded the Malagasy population, with a much smaller biological contribution from Africa. The women may have mated with their male Indonesian travel companions, or with men from Africa.

This isn't a strange pill to swallow. Growing up in Hawaii, we learned a lot as children about the currents of the Pacific Ocean, how that affection voyages across Polynesia. What they didn't teach us about Melanesia, Micronesia and any other nesia is stuff like this. Some of it wasn't known, that's for sure. DNA testing? Not when I was a kid.